Mo Bai's thoughts were in turmoil. She wished she could leave the dream domain immediately and head to Plague Garden.

But she couldn't. It would be meaningless.

She told herself that if what Li Ming said was true, then Mo Xiangyou had already died three months ago. Whether she rushed to Plague Garden now or went later, it would make no difference.

She was already too late. So late that from the very moment they met, it had already been too late.

More importantly, she couldn't put down what was in front of her.

She had to eliminate Li Ming, remove this hidden threat who didn't treat Observation Group players as human, and avenge Sheng Lei and Mo Xiangyou.

She had to break the dream domain and uncover the secret of the hidden rooms. That was crucial for clearing Disease Town.

She had to save Liu Congyi and help her resolve her mental contamination.

She had to find Gu Tiandong and the other two. Who knew where they had been tricked into going.

She had to figure out a way to save Sheng Yan. His current state was too pitiful.

Without realizing it, she had already formed so many ties in the Infinite world.

And on the scale in her heart, Mo Xiangyou weighed far less than all of these.

Mo Bai took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down, to set aside the question, and focus on something meaningful.

She turned the recorder's volume to maximum. Looking at the suffering Li Ming, she stood up from her wheelchair.

She reached out, lifted him up, and said, "I've never killed anyone."

All this time, in instance after instance, Mo Bai had only eliminated monsters. She had never once raised her hand against another player.

She hadn't yet grown accustomed to the rules of the infinite world, so her hands were still clean of other players' blood.

If necessary, she would act.

But now, she felt there was no need to dirty her hands.

She expanded the range of her Environmental Rejection to its maximum. The largest area she could now reject covered the entire building.

Mo Bai expelled all the lightning elements throughout the building, completely sealing Li Ming's abilities.

Now all he had left were a few cards.

And he was still under the mental contamination of the Requiem of Confession.

"Y-you, what kind of thing are you?" Li Ming cried out as Mo Bai dragged him along. In despair, he realized he couldn't use his abilities at all. Struggling, he shouted, "What did you do to me? How can you seal my powers?!"

Only the system should be able to seal a player's abilities. How was Mo Bai doing it?

Normally, Li Ming's strength surpassed Mo Bai's. But under the influence of the Requiem of Confession, his body wouldn't obey him, and he couldn't resist her strength.

When he saw her dragging him step by step toward Room 924, he instantly understood her intent.

With the last shred of his sanity, he roared, "Mo Bai, you're not human! The seer said that the prophecy crystal will only shatter when encountering a future Ultra-Star Rank monster. You're a monster disguised as a player. You have special abilities, don't you?!"

Mo Bai replied coldly, "Think whatever you like."

Li Ming understood her meaning. He was about to die, and the thoughts and speculations of a dead man meant nothing.

He cursed and swore, trying to provoke her with his words.

But he underestimated her.

She wasn't an ordinary woman. Her nerves were tougher than reinforced concrete, without a single crack to exploit.

"Don't, please." As Mo Bai's hand reached the door of Room 924, Li Ming finally broke down, begging through tears and snot.

Mo Bai said, "Did the Observation Group players ever beg you for mercy?"

Li Ming wanted to lie to her, but the Requiem of Confession made it impossible for him to lie.

The burly man cried as he said, "Who doesn't beg before they die? But what did I do wrong? Observation Group players can be turned into cards. Cards never betray you, way more useful than teammates. If I didn't turn them into cards, someone else would take them. Everyone does it. It's not just my fault!"

"Yes, it's not just your fault," Mo Bai said gently. "So it's not just you who deserves to die. Everyone does."

With that, she opened the door to Room 924.

Inside was a humanoid creature gnawing on tables and chairs. It was clearly female.

She was about 165 cm tall, but extremely thin, almost skin and bones. However, her stomach was grotesquely swollen, and her teeth were razor-sharp.

As she chewed on the table and chairs, she muttered, "I'm so hungry, but I need to lose weight. I'm so hungry, but I need to lose weight. I still have fat on me. I'm too fat. I need to lose weight."

She was already so emaciated, yet still wanted to lose weight.

This was a monster born under the dual oppression of hunger and the fear of fatness. She was so hungry she wanted to eat constantly, yet at the same time, she wanted to be thinner.

"No, no!" Li Ming screamed.

Mo Bai threw him into the room and shut the door.

In this place, once the door was closed, no matter what mayhem broke out inside, no sound could be heard outside.

With his abilities sealed, his Peachwood Sword only effective against spirit-type monsters, and his mind under the contamination of the Requiem of Confession, Li Ming was likely no match for the girl.

Even if he had a backup plan and could barely manage to kill the monster in 924, it didn't matter. There were still six more rooms from 925 to 930 waiting after that.

Mo Bai didn't want to dirty her hands, so she gave Li Ming a death befitting a player.

At least he had fallen on the path of clearing an instance, not like those Observation Group players who died at the hands of players they trusted.

Mo Bai waited quietly for five minutes. When she opened the door again, Li Ming was already gone.

Only the girl remained in the room. Her stomach had swollen to the size of a water tank, yet she still cried out in hunger, sobbing endlessly.

She was in great pain.

Mo Bai turned off the recorder, put on her white Spatial Blade gloves, and quietly watched her.

She knew she should end this absurd and horrifying dream.

Yet her feelings at that moment were complicated. The girl looked too much like the Observation Group players.

If someone who had dieted to the point of near-deformity entered the infinite world, they would likely become an Observation Group player.

Mo Bai felt she should say something to the girl.

She said, "You're not fat."

The girl looked up at her through tears. "No, I'm so fat. Every time I take a photo, my face looks like a giant pancake. You're so beautiful. Someone as pretty as you probably doesn't have this kind of trouble, right?"

"Everyone has their own troubles," Mo Bai said, walking up to the girl. She raised a hand to touch her face and added objectively, "Your bone structure is very good. There are no major flaws on your face, no uneven eyes, no crooked jaw, no protruding cheekbones. Your teeth are even straight. You have an excellent foundation."

Praised by someone so beautiful, the girl seemed delighted. She opened her mouth, revealing two rings of teeth, sharp and interlocking. A horrifying sight.

"But I eat too much. I don't want to eat more, but I'm so hungry. I can never get full. Can I eat you?" The girl was actually quite polite.

"No," Mo Bai refused without hesitation. "You don't eat too much."

"Really?" The girl cupped her own face. "I eat too much. I can eat 15 dumplings in one meal. I have to eat 2,000 calories of food a day. Why can't I just eat 800? If I only ate 800, I could drop to 80 jin (48 kg)!"

Mo Bai reached out and stroked the girl's head, her voice patient and soft. "At your height, around 110 jin is a healthy weight. A person's basic metabolism alone burns 1,200 to 1,500 calories a day, so 800 is far too little. You can absolutely eat 2,000 to 2,500 calories of food, exercise, and maintain a weight between 100 and 120 jin (60 to 72 kg). That's when you'll be at your most beautiful and healthiest."

"I'm so hungry," the girl cried.

"If you only eat 800 calories, you can't even sustain basic survival. Of course you'll feel hungry," Mo Bai said. "You're not fat. You're beautiful. You don't eat too much. You've done nothing wrong."

She kept telling the girl, patiently, over and over, that she had done nothing wrong.

The girl stopped crying and tilted her head at Mo Bai. "Really?"

Mo Bai answered sincerely, "Really."

In this dream domain, the monsters could clearly sense the "patient's" emotions. From Rooms 701 to 709, whenever Mo Bai stopped feeling fear, the monsters in the room would disappear. That was precisely the proof.

She believed the girl could feel her sincerity.

Sure enough, the girl sensed Mo Bai's emotions. Her body swayed slightly, and her oversized stomach was gradually reabsorbed. She transformed into a girl weighing 110 jin, her complexion rosy.

"Am I pretty?" the girl asked.

Mo Bai smiled and nodded. "Beautiful and healthy, full of vitality."

The girl saw genuine admiration in Mo Bai's eyes.

She broke into a smile through her tears, clasped her hands together over her chest, and said earnestly, "Thank you."

As those words faded, her body slowly turned transparent and disappeared.

In the spot where she had vanished, a card appeared.

 

[ Card Name: Waking Nightmare

Card Type: Special Card (Dream Instance Only)

Card Rank: B

Card Ability: Can awaken a nightmare.

Usage: Simply place it in the hands of a nightmare creature.

Uses: Once, but it is contagious. A dream awakened by it will also grow into an identical card. It can be used only once, or it can continue indefinitely.

Description: Dreams are born from the heart. Sometimes, we don't need to fight our inner demons. What we need may simply be to let go of our obsessive selves.

]

 

Perched on Mo Bai's shoulder, Xiao Qi sighed with emotion. "So in this domain, you don't actually have to fight, meow~"

Mo Bai couldn't help but sigh as well. "Exactly. Thinking about it carefully, this is only an A-rank instance after all. What A-rank instance has over a hundred monsters, with the proportion of A-rank monsters exceeding 30%? Even the research institute didn't have that many A-rank creatures."

"Even if Ms. Gao's power once influenced this dream, it shouldn't be this difficult."

"In truth, each of these rooms is just one dream after another that can't wake up."

"So all you need to do is wake a single dream to obtain the card to clear the instance."

The previous method of clearing, the one Li Ming had been using, only worked because he was strong enough and had enough cards. Otherwise, even a team killing monsters together would eventually collapse from exhaustion.

"This way of clearing it is really like a dream. In dreams, we feel monsters are unbearably terrifying, impossible to defeat no matter how hard we try. But in reality, all we have to do is wake up," Mo Bai said softly.

"But if the player wasn't kind enough, willing to comfort such a terrifying monster, it wouldn't be this easy to clear, meow~" Xiao Qi said.

"I just happened to empathize with her in that moment. I'm not gentle," Mo Bai replied.

After all, she had just shoved Li Ming into Room 924 without the slightest mercy.

Xiao Qi didn't care about her modesty. In its eyes, Mo Bai was the best.

It affectionately rubbed against her neck and said happily, "Player, Xiao Qi really likes you, meow~ I want to stay by your side forever and be your little helper."

Mo Bai reached out a finger to scratch under its chin and replied softly, "You will."

Just like that, Li Ming was dead.

Since he hadn't entrusted his cards to anyone before dying, all the cards he had obtained in the instance were reclaimed by the system. Only two were retained.

One was Dusk Walker, a contaminated card that the system clearly didn't want to take back. The other was a card transformed from a certain Observation Group player: I Want to Be Liked.

After the hungry girl disappeared, these two cards appeared in the room, lying beneath Waking Nightmare.

Mo Bai picked them up.

On the surface of Dusk Walker were the words:

Everything in this world will come to an end. Each of us will walk toward the apocalypse, toward dusk. The only thing I can do is sit within the dusk, to be an observer, to be a guardian, to hold fast through the twilight years of the world, and fall into slumber alongside it.

—Words left behind by someone who had personally witnessed "Dusk."

An endless sense of loneliness surged from the text, as if trying to swallow Mo Bai whole.

But she simply stroked Xiao Qi's warm, soft fur, and the feeling of isolation dissolved with ease.

Dusk Walker could shield against all mental contamination except direct attacks from Ultra-Star Rank monsters. Its usage required the user to praise "Dusk" once every five minutes. If the card was used for more than an hour, the user had to bask in sunlight or moonlight for ten minutes, or else become an apostle of "Dusk."

Dusk Walker didn't disappear with use. It was a permanent card with no cost. The only way to destroy it was through rule-based restriction.

Mo Bai didn't want this card to continue existing, so she activated Environmental Rejection again and rejected the power of "Dusk." The card gradually faded away.

But Mo Bai's energy also dropped rapidly, falling below 80%. She could only activate Environmental Rejection two more times.

"It's a bit weaker than the little girl's flames we encountered outside the hospital, but still absurdly strong," Mo Bai said. "The reason I could destroy this card is probably because the domain itself rejects it. I just provided an assist."

Next, she looked at I Want to Be Liked.

The card read:

 [

When a person's desire to be liked becomes strong enough, all of their actions take on "viewing value," because every gesture exists to please others.

Using this card allows you to make any player, monster, or instance boss like you, including Ultra-Star Rank monsters.

However, you will also uncontrollably develop the urge to please others, and you may not even be aware of this change in yourself.

Most importantly, for some monsters, "liking" you doesn't necessarily mean helping you. There is also a way of loving you that is "loving you so much it kills and possesses you."

 ]

 

This card explained some of Li Ming's earlier behavior that Mo Bai had found strange before. Whenever Li Ming exuded that strong sense of attraction, his attitude toward her became unusually careful and eager to cooperate, even somewhat ingratiating.

It turned out that Li Ming's own desires had merged with the card's ingratiating influence, and even he himself didn't notice the change.

Thinking back to her own former title effect, Broken Porcelain Doll, Mo Bai couldn't help but say, "Cards from the Observation Group are never as useful as they seem."

The suffering originally borne by those Observation Group players had simply been transferred through the cards.

The stronger the card's ability, the harsher its drawbacks.

Mo Bai put the card away. She had no intention of using a card forged from someone's life. She only wanted to keep it, placing it alongside the Information Extraction card.

If those Observation Group players could never be revived, then at the very least, let her prepare a resting place for them and erect a tombstone in their memory.

After collecting her spoils, Mo Bai entered Room 925.

Inside the room was a small old woman carrying a giant infant on her back. The infant stood three meters tall. Its body was that of a baby, but its face was that of an adult. An umbilical cord connected it to the old woman, and it kept crying out, "Give me more nutrients," "Give me more."

The old woman herself was barely half a meter tall. Her body was completely hunched over, looking as though she might collapse and die at any moment.

Seeing Mo Bai, she painfully reached out a hand and said, "I don't have enough nutrients. Give me yours!"

Mo Bai simply placed Waking Nightmare into her hand and said, "No matter whose dream this is, wake up."

The old woman and the giant infant both vanished the moment they touched the card. Another Waking Nightmare appeared in the room.

This time, there was an extra line of notes beneath the card.

[ Note: This is the dream of a child who emptied his parents' wallets to buy a house and feels guilty about it. The fear was born of self-reproach. He fears becoming the greedy giant infant from his dream. But in reality, the very moment such a fearful dream is born, it means he is already trying to avoid that fate. ]

Mo Bai took the new card and headed toward Room 926.

In less than five minutes, every room on the 9th floor was empty.

She returned to the 5th and 6th floors, checking each room and awakening every dream inside.

When all the rooms were finally empty, Mo Bai still had a Waking Nightmare card in her hand.

At that moment, she heard that familiar sigh again, the same sigh that had once warned her not to acknowledge her parents' names.

Sensing something, Mo Bai turned her head. At the end of the corridor, a room had appeared.

The number on its door was not 501, but 404.

Even in this hospital, there had never been a ward labeled "404." The number was considered unlucky, so it had been skipped when the room numbers were assigned.

And online, “404” meant something else entirely: Page not found. File does not exist.

This... was a room that did not exist.